Wednesday, August 10, 2011

WALMART PULLS PLUG ON ONLINE MUSIC STORE

According to Digital Music News, Walmart's MP3 store will shut its digital doors forever on August 28th.

Walmart's music store was seen as an "iTunes killer" at one time. By deeply discounting MP3s to only $0.88 Walmart hoped to dethrone the Apple king. However, Walmart, even with the discounts, could not overcome the power of the idevice's tight integration with iTunes.

A representative of Wal-Mart noted that older, protected files will still be supported. "We’ve made a business decision to no longer offer MP3 digital tracks as of August 29, 2011," the executive confirmed. In late 2008, the company finally secured licenses to shift away from DRM-protected purchased and towards MP3s. "We'll continue to provide support to our customers who previously purchased digital music through Walmart Music Downloads so they may continue to enjoy and manage their existing WMA files."